Political Anthropology

Through a combination of classic and contemporary anthropological readings, this course considers how anthropologists locate "the political" and study it ethnographically. Drawing upon anthropological theory and ethnographic study, the course examines the ways in which social groups enact, contest, reproduce and transform power relations in different contexts. The course begins by introducing classic anthropological studies, followed by ethnographies that analyze the dynamics between nation and state. The final half of the course studies emergent political formations and power relations under a changing global political order.